The 1929-30 Boston Bruins were defending Stanley Cup champions. They featured the great Eddie Shore and Dit Clapper (names you know) as well as four other Hall of Famers — Cooney Weiland, Marty Barry, Harry Oliver and goalie Tiny Thompson. There were other stars as well, like Dutch Gainor, Myles Lane (who is in the College Football Hall of Fame and later became a United States Attorney in Manhattan and a State Supreme Court justice) and Shore’s defense partners George Owen and Lionel Hitchman. They finished the season with only 5 losses in 44 games, tying only once. Their .875 percentage of available points still stands as an N.H.L. best.

They were a rough-and-tumble group in a rough-and-tumble time who didn’t play pretty. Coach Art Ross even felt it necessary to order the defense corps to wear protective helmets, as he did for one game against their archrivals, the Montreal Maroons, to protect his players. Theirs was the Bruins era that established the club’s image that survives today, one of never-stop-trying, do-what-it-takes-to-win hockey, a rugged and hard-working outfit.

That’s what Bostonians expect from their Bruins. After too many down years, it is what they are getting this season.

The Times’ Lynn Zinser took a look at the current edition of the Bruins last month, detailing the long valleys they and their fans have traveled before again beginning their recent ascent with “a hard-working group with the kind of spunk and grit Bostonians see in themselves.” And in today’s Boston Globe, John Powers echoes those observations.
Powers writes that Claude Julien’s current Bruins have enjoyed the best start in club history since that fabled 1929-30 cast of characters. This team isn’t exactly like that crew. Nor, he writes is it “the same frat house where Espo and E.J. and Cheesie and the Chief cavorted 37 years ago, when the Stanley Cup was the team punch bowl.”

But the fraternity laws apparently haven’t changed very much. “A lot of it is about the pride that this franchise established many years ago,” says Julien, whose club is off to its best start (29-10, plus 4 bonus points for losing in OT or shootouts) since that 1929-30 team. “It’s funny how everybody talks about this game having changed so much — and it has — but the one thing that hasn’t changed and is still giving us success is the old identity of the Boston Bruins.”

The Bruins’ renaissance hasn’t gotten quite the same notice as the Blackhawks’ rebirth in Chicago, but it does have that town excited about their club after years of indifferent results and declining interest.

What makes this team the best in the Eastern Conference as the N.H.L. nears the halfway pole? Powers mentions the Bruins’ international roster, although he acknowledges every team in the league is like that now. Still, Julien knows how to get them working together.

“Everyone has to buy in,” P.J. Axelsson says. “It’s not enough with 14, 15, 16 guys. You need every single guy to buy in, and the guys in here have done that.”

Powers’s contention is that success lies in the Bruins’ work ethic, a team concept that even has Marc Savard backchecking and throwing his body around, and the players sticking up for one another in the trenches. That starts with the B’s captain — and, some think, the best defenseman in the N.H.L. in the first half — Zdeno Chara.

But Powers shouldn’t neglect the work done by G.M. Peter Chiarelli, who hired Julien and snagged important Bruins like David Krejci, Blake Wheeler, Dennis Wideman and Michael Ryder (who follows Julien everywhere). This edition of the B’s probably has more depth than any since the last time Boston played in the Stanley Cup final — and that was 20 seasons back.

“You’ve got to take pride in putting that jersey on,” Bruins V.P. Cam Neely, a main cog on those last great Boston teams, told Powers. “It’s been a tradition for years and years and years. This team plays a certain way.”

The Bruins are playing that way again.

Metro Report: Rangers 4, Penguins no score. Fan blogger Margaret Hurley of My Blueshirt Heaven wrote, “Well, I guess this game should quiet the doom and gloomers until at least Wednesday. If anyone out there can point to a Ranger deficiency in this game, let them speak now or forever hold their peace….The Rangers outhit, outfaced-off, outfought, outgoaltended, outpenalty-killed, outpower-played and outhustled the Penguins tonight. This was their best game of the season.”

Hurley asks the BIG QUESTION: “Why can’t the Rangers play like this all the time?”

And she puts it on the players, writing: “I am not saying that the coaching staff is perfect, far from it. But when the players execute the game plan, they win. When one sees a complete turn around like tonight, it clearly demonstrates that winning and losing is in the hands of the players themselves. The coaches and training staff can do their best to ensure the team has every advantage. But, at the end of the day, it’s up to the players to play like they know they can and they will win.”

Ms. Hurley was a guest on Sunday’s “New York Hockey Talk Radio Program,” which airs on Long Island’s 1240AM WGBB. Here’s the link to that program, and for out-of-towners who wonder what a real Rangers fan has to say on the state of the team, Margaret — who is a blue seater from Section 409 and the program’s final guest — is the real deal.

This show is a good update on all three area clubs. Mark Hermann from Newday is on the program as well and he has great praise for Mark Streit (Hermann wonders what the Rangers would be like had they signed Streit instead of Wade Redden) and Richard Park (whom Hermann calls the Isles M.V.P.).

The Isles led, 2-0, last night in the first period, but lost that early lead, this time to Edmonton. The didn’t get the bounces, says Newsday’s Greg Logan, and two of them bounced past Joey MacDonald in goal for the second straight game. MacDonald also gave up one that came off an Oilers stick.

The Devils play in Carolina tonight against a very hot goaltender in the Canes’ Cam Ward, who was one of the N.H.L.’s three stars last week — a 3-0-0 record, 1.33 goals-against average and .944 save percentage in wins over Atlanta, St. Louis and Tampa Bay.

Jordan Staal, who some Penguins fans have given up on (like Pensblog) could be trade bait, according to Adam Portzline blogging for the Columbus Dispatch, who is reviving the “Staal hates Coach Michel Therrien” story. If they can’t land Staal, Portzline has other potential bound-for-Columbus trade possibilities, including Doug Weight.

Sabres captain Craig Rivet was expected to return with his (hopefully) healed shoulder to the lineup Tuesday night against the Senators after an 11-game absence. John Vogl of the Buffalo News says he tested his wing by applying a few cross checks to teammate Derek Roy in practice yesterday and the shoulder “responded real well,” Rivet said. Center Tim Connolly is scheduled to return to the lineup this weekend; he’s played only 6 of 39 games so far. But winger Maxim Afinogenov is probably out for a while with a groin injury. He’s had two goals this season in 34 games.

The Sharks have chewed up the league everywhere. They have yet to lose in regulation at home and have won 10 of 17 road games, getting bonus points in three more. That road record is merely third best in the league, behind Boston and Detroit and not good enough for Patrick Marleau, Rob Blake and the rest of the the Sharks, says David Pollak of the San Jose Mercury News.

And finally, the Caps (who have won 6 straight and 11 of 12) face the banged-up Flyers on Tuesday night. Coach Bruce Boudreau told reporters Monday that his guys don’t like those guys very much. “I don’t know how much they like us, but we don’t like them,” Boudreau said (quoted in the Washington Post), referencing a game last month in which the Flyers beat the Caps, 7-1, even though Donald Brashear beat up Riley Cote twice and a number of dust-ups followed. Post writer Tariq El-Bashir reminded readers of the run-ins that the Caps traveling party had with Flyers fans last spring during the playoffs.

At the morning skate in D.C., local news media ran to Flyers Coach John Stevens who, sadly, tried his best not to get drawn into a war of words. Here’s Stevens’s response (following Boudreau’s remarks from the morning, which were less provocative).

Thanks for the mention and your support for my blog. I really appreciate it.

As I said on the radio show, I am but one of the many astute fans in 409. We all share our passion for the Rangers and the game.

I only wish hockey got more coverage locally from the major media outlets. Radio programs like Rob Kowal’s New York Hockey Talk provide a great service to the fan bases. Steve Sommers on the Fan also gets it with regard to local hockey coverage.

I love the musical interludes but I feel really old when I recognize all those songs and performers.

comnsnse – The Rangers reference now seems gone from the headline, but certainly if you read the “Metro Report” section and notice praise she heaps on them while asking the question why they can’t do this all the time, and couple that with the way they started the season, the notion of asking if the Rangers are back hopefully is more clear. Perhaps not, but that was the intention of the original headline.

Marg – Don’t feel old. Duke Ellington said “There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.” It doesn’t matter when the music is made, only that it means something to you. And your passion for the game and your team are admirable. It makes for good blogging. And there are only two kinds of blogs.

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Slap Shot, the New York Times hockey blog, reports on the Rangers, the National Hockey League and anything that glides quickly across a frozen surface anywhere on the globe, from the snowy prairies of Saskatchewan to the frigid steppes of Russia and beyond, like, say, Phoenix.

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